DRM Interoperability

The use of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies for the enforcement of digital media usage models is currently subject of a heated debate. Consumer organizations and national governments claim that DRM technology interferes with basic personal rights, such as the right to make copies for personal use or the right to use content on any platform of choice. This issue has lately gained increased attention by a trend in some European countries to force DRM vendors and online media stores to open up their respective DRM technologies, i.e. make them interoperable. In the first part of this talk we discuss the many obstacles to DRM interoperability, both technological, legal and business wise. In the second part we discuss discuss some potential solutions to the DRM interoperability problem. In particular, we present the Coral DRM interoperability framework that allows multiple DRM systems to seamlessly work together while at the same time requiring minimal modification to existing DRMs.